Troma over the years, nothing out there is quite like Student Confidential. Marketed 
like a typical '80s teen high school comedy, this was the passion project of Richard Horian, an inventor and manufacturer of a record-cleaning product that hit it big in retail. He decided to put his money into a movie serving as the director, writer, star, music composer, and just about anything else apparently that had to be done behind the scenes. In the process he somehow roped in some highly accomplished talent behind the camera and pulled together a cast including the son of Hollywood royalty, a well-remembered Playboy centerfold, the sole Oscar-nominated acting alumnus from A Nightmare on Elm Street, and even one of the Jacksons. What you get is something even stranger than you could anticipate.
a street gang, and a final dramatic reckoning that will push everyone's emotions past the tipping point.
production that wears its heart on its sleeve in a way that feels galaxies removed from any kind of normal cinema. There's enough exploitable material here to see why Troma picked it up (including a lot more nudity than you'd expect), but it's also a melodramatic, squirmingly sincere production with every actor seemingly on their own different wavelength. It's the kind of film you can easily brand as terrible by any conventional standard, but it sticks in your mind and is certainly never boring for a second. The fact that its own creator was so burned by the film's reception that he tried to wipe it off the planet for a while somehow seems poetically apt here, but we're lucky now that he didn't succeed and came around to participating in a full-on special edition from Severin Films as a two-disc Blu-ray set in 2026.
various actors, the process of putting the film together on his own dime, the bizarre nature of dealing with people in Hollywood, the worthlessness of acting classes, and much, much more.
extras side, "Richard Horian Revealed" (14m31s) is a video interview with the man who made it all happen talking about the "sheer determination" behind his dream project, the unfortunate successful trashing of his follow-up film Williamstowne, his approach to creating the score, the performance nuances brought out by the new restoration, and more. "Acquired Tastes" (13m51s) with Lloyd Kaufman is a rapid-fire conversation with various titles thrown out by McCarthy which prompt bite-sized recollections about their production or acquisition, plus a crazy closing diversion involving Oliver Stone and summer camp you won't believe. "The Making of Student Confidential" (19m33s) features assistant cameraman Ron Raschke, actors Corwyn Anthony and Susie Scott, Kaufman (briefly), and McCarthy chatting about the tragic trajectory of Douglas (who died of a drug overdose years later), the positive vibe on set, Jackson's professionalism coming right off of "We Are the World," the weirdness of getting naked on camera, the album Horian recorded before this that got brought onto set, the one participant who ended up winning an Oscar, and the reason the film ended up landing at Troma. Also included are the theatrical trailer, a TV spot (as The Counselor), and the Troma trailer highlighted by a line about Blakely that will make you do a double take. The second disc is devoted entirely to The Vanity Project, a six-episode video podcast about the film with narration by McCarthy and visuals and production enlisting Graham Reznick and Zena Grey. The episodes include "Before the Internet" (34m52s), "They Were There" (33m43s), "The Girl with the Scar" (30m17s), "Richard" (32m8s), "The Eleventh Hour" (28m47s), and "A World of Dreams" (34m38s), covering McCarthy's first exposure to the film in its New England premiere as part of a movie marathon (alongside Eegah! among others), his first interview with Scott, a key viewing of Death in Venice, Horian's attempts to destroy his own work, a chat with Joe Rubin about noteworthy vanity films like the brain-boiling Champagne and Bullets and the now extinct After Last Season, and the ultimate salvation and delivery of the original elements to the Academy Film Archive. 